The UK Ministry of Justice released for the first time the official results of the Peterborough Social Impact Bond – the world’s first-ever SIB and the inspiration for many more SIBs to follow and CGD’s work on Development Impact Bonds. Independently verified findings show that the package of services funded by the SIB led to an 8.4% reduction in reconviction rates for ex-offenders from Peterborough compared to a national comparison group. But those who were anxiously waiting to see if investors under this first SIB would get paid returns for successful results will have to wait two more years: although the results were positive and are above the minimum threshold set by the project of a 7.5% reduction, the reduction was not big enough to earn investors an early return at this point.

The first Social Impact Bond project in the world, the Peterborough prison effort to reduce recidivism by 10%, has encountered a problem: It didn’t meet the 10% target for the first cohort of released prisoners and therefore failed to qualify for an early payout for investors. In fact, according to this report from the National Union of Public and General Employees, “the data released this week shows the scheme will come nowhere near achieving what proponents claimed it would when the project was launched.” (“Nowhere near,” it appears, actually was a mere 8.4% reduction in recidivism.)